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Millermatic vs. Hobart

sleepsontoilet said:
Must've sold them, he only has one item and it's a big spot welder.
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None of them are listed on eBay right now. I spoke to him on the phone and he texted me pics. Only the final transaction took place on eBay via a Buy it Now auction. He did have 2 previous ones on eBay that I watched just to get an idea of what he was getting for them. That's how I originally found him.
 
My Dad has had a Hobart Data-Mig 200 for along time I think around early to mid 90's and has never had any trouble with it the local welding co Scott-Gross told me that Hobart is now not to be compared to miller in quality or service. I have just recently seen the quality of Miller, a friend of mine got a few items at a auction and one as a Miller 350p 2001 model got it home and fixed a plug on it and would not come on parts of it would work but all the panel would not so he sold it to me for cheap because of what the circuit boards cost well I looked around some with no luck finding any used boards and called Miller and asked if they could check the boards and let me buy just the one that was bad(there was a led light burning on one of the big boards so I thought it was OK) They said yea send them and we will switch them out in see. It went about a month and no word so I give the guy a call back and asked about them and his last name was Miller :dunno: but he said he had put them somewhere and had forgot about them, So I figured I was screwed on the deal he comes back to me with give me the S/N and I will send them all to you for free that's close to 2grand in boards and now I have my first working mig welder on the cheap. So I will buy Miller next time because of the good service they have and not because they sent free boars to me but because they was going to go through the process of seeing what board was bad for me and letting me buy just what I needed
 
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Got my welder today. Smooth as butter. Can't believe I suffered through a Lincoln all those years. Very happy camper.
 
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patooyee said:
Got my welder today. Smooth as butter. Can't believe I suffered through a Lincoln all those years. Very happy camper.
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I felt the same way..
 
My welder came with this new Profax 250 gun as well as the old factory gun. The factory gun works fine and this Profax unit is gigantic. I think its meant for someone in a production environment that is using 250 amps constantly. Is there some issue I'm unaware of with the factory Miller gun or should I eBay it? Its so big that I honestly doubt I would ever use it even if I needed a new gun.

IMG_20141122_182945246.jpg


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The stock Miller gun is 1.5 times the size of my old Lincoln gun and this gun is 1.5 times the size of the Miller.
 
Been looking at buying a welder the last few weeks. Northern tool has theirs on sale. Been looking at a Lincoln 180 and a Hobart 190. Hobart is $30 higher. First question is is that enough welder for me to make repairs with. Probably won't ever build a whole buggy. Just add tabs or fix broke stuff. Which one should I buy or am I wasting my money on both?
 
I loved my northen tool 135 or 140 cant remember model but its well worth them$. I built several rigs with it.

Mix read last night. Thought you were asking about the northern tool welders.
 
Re: Re: Re: Millermatic vs. Hobart

patooyee said:
My welder came with this new Profax 250 gun as well as the old factory gun. The factory gun works fine and this Profax unit is gigantic. I think its meant for someone in a production environment that is using 250 amps constantly. Is there some issue I'm unaware of with the factory Miller gun or should I eBay it? Its so big that I honestly doubt I would ever use it even if I needed a new gun.

IMG_20141122_182945246.jpg


IMG_20141122_182938228_HDR.jpg


The stock Miller gun is 1.5 times the size of my old Lincoln gun and this gun is 1.5 times the size of the Miller.
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That looks a lot like the guns our welders use at work. They do a lot of spray arc and high amp stuff, but they are a real pain to get into tight spots
 
Since I got my 251 I haven't had the occasion to use it much. I've done small little 10-minute jobs with it on lighter materials, nothing that mattered. I've had .035 wire spooled up in the machine since I got it, really too thick for everything I've done with it up until today. I finally did some thicker material with it a few days ago on a larger job and it was sure nice! But today I was doing some exhaust work and I figured it would be a good chance to switch over to .023 wire and test it out. It was a total fail on multiple fronts unfortunately.

First I discovered that the spool of wire I purchased brand new is wound up weird. Layers of wire were wound on top of other layers causing it to bind up every other second. I manually unspooled about 1/4 of the brand new spool and threw it in the trash, finally got down to some layers that seemed not to be tangled. But even after that I couldn't get it to feed through the gun at all. It would weld for a second or two and then stop feeding, creating a huge rat nest of tangled wire at the drive wheels where it was obviously just stopping and continued feeding without going anywhere. I never had this issue with my Lincoln but it was obvious that there is resistance somewhere in the gun that is too much for the thin wire to feed through. The straighter I kept the whip the better it did but even perfectly straight it would eventually do it again. I finally just gave up, went back to .035 and dealt with it on the thin wall tube, no big deal. The .035 wire had ZERO issues.

Do I need a new gun liner or something? I feel like the machine should be able to work with .023.
 
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http://www.usaweld.com/Miller-MIG-Welding-Gun-Replacement-Parts-p/miller-m25-parts.htm

According to this there is a sperate liner for both sizes? I have to change them out with the wire?
 
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jordan7118 said:
That seems like poor engineering if you have to do that???
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Google searches indicate it is a common issue and the .023 liner is the solution. I also called usaweld.com and they confirmed it. The say people with the 251 who switch between .023 and bigger wires generally just buy an extra gun to switch out instead of the liner every time. I agree, that seems really dumb but I do switch between .023 and .035 quite often so I guess it is something I will look into unfortunately.
 
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I had a roll of Hobart wire do that. I took it back to tractor supply and got a refund. I unwind half of the roll and threw it away. After reading I've seen that several companies have the issue just most get caught in qa inspections.
 
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ranger11 said:
I had a roll of Hobart wire do that. I took it back to tractor supply and got a refund. I unwind half of the roll and threw it away. After reading I've seen that several companies have the issue just most get caught in qa inspections.
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This was Hobart wire from TSC also.
 
Interesting to know. I'm still learning my 256, but wire did seem to make a difference. I bought .035 Kobelco and they didn't have it in stock. So they gave me a roll of Blue Demon wire. IMO it just doesn't weld as well as the Kobe. The shop insisted on .035, but I would like to try some thinner wire sometime. Now I'm wondering if I go smaller, if mine will have the same issue?
 
TSC Hobart wire sucks, I have had issues twice with it, picked up small roll of Lincoln wire from Lowes to confirm it the second time, yep TSC wire sucked.
 

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